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I was asked for a few comments by the local paper on how likely it was that we would see online universities expand and how might learning occur in such environments. The story was not very detailed but it did introduce me to a new start-up with a difference, the University of the People, where faculty teach for free (insert sarcastic comment now!). While it’s easy to be cynical about many online universities, with their carefully selected curricula and limited provision of labs and libraries, there is something romantic about a university for the people, provided on the ‘net and populated with carefully harvested and quality controlled information that is freely available. Not saying UofTP is that model, but one lives in hope that the online world can make such offerings real.

Here’s a couple of interesting quotes:

“library education is too important to be left to the educators. Yes this is what has happened in the past two decades, and with disastrous results”

“A glance at recent library history helps us to understand the task that the profession faces in restoring the library community to health”

“A survey of library personnel offices in acadmic libraries outlined some of the skills considered important for beginning librarians. A host of nonbibliographic competencies emerged, including business skills, networking and research methods”

No, these are not part of the discussion on the latest COA Standards for LIS education but quotations from a series of articles on the field published in Library Journal a quarter of a century ago, 1983 to be precise. The articles make interesting and depressingly familiar reading today. If you really think we’ve progressed, take a look at this op-ed from the the CSM. I’d comment more on that shrill diatribe if I thought it warranted any further comment, the real point is that LIS education’s natural state seemingly is crisis, permanent crisis. And the chief culprits are:

Library schools in general
iSchools in particular
Faculty
Universities
Library managers
TV
Computing
Twitter
Publishers
Young people
Google
the education system
You and me

Now, if we could just deal with that little list we could get Library Schools back where they belong…….now where was that Nirvana exactly?

Am in the middle of a major office move as the iSchool packs up from its current home and shifts to a new dedicated 40,000 sf space in a new building. Years of effort come down to a packing frenzy this week and in the course of it I have come to realize just how much paper I really have accumulated over the years. Determining what to keep and what to delete has taken a particularly poignant turn with academic journals. Books I keep but journals? Through memberships of editorial boards or professional societies, I have acquired a couple of decades worth of academic journals such as JASIST, IJHCS, BIT, ACMTOCHI, IwC and so on, not to mention innumerable issues of various others. The unfortunate truth is that I just don’t need them. If I want an article, rather than cross my office to locate it I tend to pull it up on line from our library. I started working this way years back and have given up on the paper versions. Everyone speaks of serendipity as the irreplaceable quality of browsing shelves but I can experience that digitally too by browsing. Of course one imagines needing the paper back up but I never have and I have now to recognize the reality – I could save a lot of trees, space and mailing costs if I could opt out. Sadly, not enough societies or publishers make this easy enough. Worse still, all that paper seems to be unwanted by anyone (and as I browse through some of it, I realize why — there is a lot of rubbish published in some fields). Piles of discarded books and journals sit in our corridor with an invitation to anyone interested to ‘help yourself’ to anything. The piles rarely get smaller. Libraries don’t want my old journals and while I’ve not yet tried e-bay, I have to ask, who is willing to pay the cost of shipping these somewhere? A colleague tells me she threw out all her old JASIST as part of this move as the students did not even want them for free. I just did it this morning with a load of old (and no so old) SIGCHI conference proceedings — let’s see how long they stay there. I have to say it all feels somewhat liberating but will we regret this someday?

I woke to read in the local paper that the “Global Language Monitor” (imagine!) had declared that Web 2.0 was now officially the English language’s one millionth word……and to add to it, this monitor is based in Austin TX!! Arg…..since when does the expression “Web 2.0″ constitute one word? And how in the Dickens do these people count anyhow? Expressing my horror to colleagues revealed that most people did not share my disquiet or at least could conceal it better. Fortunately, linguists came to the rescue in the form of confirmation from Geoffrey Nunberg who declared authoritatively that the Monitor’s claim was ” bushwa, fraud, hokum,”. Phew…. Now I have to ask, is “bushwa” another claimant or is it a demonstratively fulsome example of BS? or is it Bing? No doubt, the Monitor is on it!! Ah Ludwig, meaning is in use!

Nice ads…lots of money on terms and marketing (what’s new?) but my quick search using Bing showed nothing very different from a Google search. But then Google just gives us lots of answers, Bing gives us the means of a decision. Semantics never were so sweet….let’s pray MS has some substance behind the BS.

My interview made it in cut and paste form into the news article on last nights evening news — play the video to see it all.

It’s been a curious week. I’ve been interviewed twice already by local media and suddenly an entry on user-centered design from ages back in this blog has spiked in views for reasons that elude me. The Daily Texan called me to comment on the new Kindle and asked me why people were so resistant to e-books. The resulting story sheds little light on that and even less on what I actually said, which was that the uptake is slow but progressing and results less from any major technical breakthrough than the steady accretion of knowledge about how we read and how we can design tools to help rather than just compete with traditional forms. In this regard the new Kindle is less a killer app than a solid progression in the right direction, but that doesn’t ring so well in the news.

Fox News affiliated TV here in Austin sent in a team to ask me about CraigsList. I assumed, incorrectly, they wanted a comment on the recent murder link from Boston but no, it was actually a more general session talking about why it is successful and if it is a fad. I suggested it was not since human societies had set up spaces throughout history to enable barter and exchange, Craigs just offering this in a basic digital form that enabled anyone to use it. As a design, it speaks to the triumph of simplicity over visual aesthetics and with just 23 employees, you can understand why Google bought a stake in it. This one won’t air until next week but I am sure the 20 mins of tape will be boiled down to 10 seconds of commentary, so who knows what I will say!

Seems there is an insatiable appetite for information about new technologies, their whys and wherefores, who does and does not use them, and what their adoption means for society. Too bad that the intellectual disciplines that deal with such topics seem so unable to shed light in a form that others can understand. I guess user-centered design knowledge is in need of its own design makeover.

I just finished reading an account of the long battle faced by Abraham Morganteler, a clinical professor at Harvard, to convince others in the medical community that testosterone treatment did not increase risk of prostrate cancer. Turns out that despite decades of teaching otherwise, the ‘basis’ for this claim was a pair of old studies, one flawed, another poorly reported, that most doctors had never read. When conference audiences and publishers gave Morgantaler’s initial contrary results a dismissive but not unscientific response, arguing that his sample was small (true), he gathered more data until this objection could no longer be levied. But the real breakthrough came when he visited the HMS library and in it’s darker recesses pulled out the original papers which had established the original recommendations of the medical profession. Surprise, surprise, the original 1941 piece was built on a sample of three, and two of these were confounded, leaving it to provide but a single data point. The second, a 1980s study, presented what appeared to be solid evidence in the summary which actually was not supported by a closer reading of the full text. And you thought medicine was a science, right? Of course, in many fields there exist ‘classic’ findings which become standard fodder for text books and which students and subsequently professionals never read in the original – such is the price of the explosion in publications. So while it would pay us all to check our sources, what we really need is a tool to help us mine the scientific record intelligently. In the absence of this, we might want to remind people of the importance of records, archives and the academic library.

And in this continuing series, the latest CRA Taulbee Survey on enrollments in CS depts shows a 6.2% rise over the last year. This is the first increase in computer science programs in six years. Before you get too carried away though, the data reveal a couple of related glitches. Batchelor’s degree production is down 10%, while PhD production is up 5.7%. Of course, the gender issues will not change quickly, less than 12% of batchelor’s degrees were awarded to women. The picture is a little more optimistic at the doctoral level where 20% of new PhD’s are female, In sum, current enrollment is comparable to the numbers seen in 1999, after the large spike in the early years of this century. The report suggests we may be at the peak of PhD production this year and should anticipate a decline in the years ahead.

A new feature of this year’s report is the inclusion of data from some of the iSchools. There are some interesting differences between CS and I schools in the data set, eg, iSchools with undergrad programs seem to have twice as many black or African-American students as CS programs. At the masters level, iSchools seem fairly evenly balanced between males and females, while CS and CE programs are typically only 21% female. Given the numbers involved and the differing emphases between CS and iSchools at the Masters level, firm conclusions are difficult to draw. The report itself ends confidently, reporting that CS is now in a position of strength, as long as you don’t consider diversity. Oh well then…..